The Hart Career Center's staff welcomes alumni in addition to students.

According to Warren Kistner, many of the Hart Career Center services that were at your fingertips as an Illinois Wesleyan student are available to you as an alum as well.

Kistner, who is director of the center, noted a big spike in alumni appointments during the years following the 2008 economic downturn. While current students receive scheduling priority, the Hart Career Center staff recorded 138 appointments with alumni seeking tips or counsel on employment during the 2012-13 academic year.

While many colleges and universities charge alumni for career guidance, Hart Career Center services such as career counseling or resume review are available free of charge.

Alumni employers who wish to seek jobs or recruit for their companies through Titan CareerLink may also do so free of charge. Titan CareerLink is a web-based system that manages all of the Hart Center’s recruitment efforts. Through Titan CareerLink, students and alumni can gain access to on- and off-campus recruitment information and apply for these opportunities online. Users can also publish their resumes online for employers to review, along with their personal profiles.

One powerful tool in job-seekers’ arsenal is the web-based professional networking site LinkedIn, which has some 260 million registered users. According to the Career Center’s Laurie Diekhoff, Titans seeking jobs at a particular company can search LinkedIn to find out if other alumni work there. Once you’ve created a LinkedIn account, look under the “Network” tab, then select “find alumni.” The site will sort IWU alumni who are LinkedIn users by geographic location, employer, job sector and skills.

“This is an excellent tool we use all the time to help students explore career options and perhaps connect with alumni in a job, community or organization of interest,” says Diekhoff.

Human resource professionals use LinkedIn more than any other profession, Diekhoff adds. “More and more HR pros are proactively looking at profiles of people they want to bring in for interviews, as opposed to resumes coming to them.”